Monitoring Your Audience

by Danny Summers

As a Garden Center Owner or Manager, you are constantly in what we might call "observation mode" as you go through each week, watching in-store traffic, as plants and products move through. And all this is parallel to also studying your POS data, Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Year-to-Date against your budget and plans.

Group Owners and Managers have another important level of observation advantage, what is happening across The Group in peer Centers. The benefit of seeing peer Centers in the same region as well as regions that might be ahead of your area in the seasonal cycles, is a unique position. When are certain categories surging or falling off? When are traffic levels changing? And how does this all compare to or point to what you can watch for just a few weeks ahead in your Center?

This year, we have certainly seen Transaction Counts reduced Year-to-Date resulting in lower sales, about -5% overall. Our three western-most regions are the only ones reporting gains against 2023 and they had a tough 2023 with heavy snow and rain, so they had room to rebound.

But what about overall? How is your traffic changing, or is it?

Are you seeing any trends in who is in your Center?

What about age groups? Are you seeing most of your "boomer audience" or are you seeing fewer as they downsize, retire and even relocate out of your market?

How about that large group of new "younger faces" that you gained starting in 2020? Are they continuing to visit your Center? Are you seeing multiple visits for each of these groups?

I realize there is very little data in the POS data today that shows age groups so Monitoring Your Audience, especially for age groups, is more of a visual estimation process. If any Center asks for birthday info it is usually only month and day – not year. At some point, it might be useful to at least estimate basic demographic details, such as generational grouping.

As The Group's Team monitors Group data and listens to Group Centers' comments, it feels like we are seeing 'boomers" transition faster and not gaining the younger "Gens" to replace the traffic, transactions and sales. But, this is something only you can explore and find the answers to these questions for your Center.

Finding these answers for your Center is critical as it will dictate shifts you need to make in how you reach, communicate, and ultimately connect with your audience.

The title for this message, Monitoring Your Audience, is a result of watching The Group's WDR each week, listening to all of our eList communications as well as other voice conversations, whether one-on-one or during our monthly GROUPtalk LIVE sessions.

Sid Raisch said in his recent blog message "ReThink Marketing - Degradation," things are changing. Sid also pointed me to an update in INC Magazine last week on Starbucks. The author, discussing upcoming changes announced at Starbucks following the first decline (-3%) in sales since 2020, referred to the old saying,

"If it ain't broke don't fix it, right? And don't you have a million other things to spend your time on? Only problem: The world doesn't stand still. Things around you change. And if the way you do things doesn't keep pace, you can fall behind."

Sid's thought after reading this Starbucks coverage was that Starbucks is focused on their legacy audience and what they are doing and how they are doing it is not being received well by their potential new audience. And this means the new audience is going elsewhere, several he mentioned such as Philz Coffee, which he says has a "decidedly young hip vibe", or Dutch Bros., another one which seems more centered on younger customers.

Monitoring Your Audience points to your changing audience. Let's face it, your audience is always changing. But, today it may be changing faster than normal and you have to catch up and be up-to-date, or just like Starbucks, you will be falling behind.

All of this thinking about your changing audience has me now thinking about Katie Tamony's presentation at The Fall Event 2024... The Evolving Customer!

With Katie's background and her extensive work at Monrovia in consumer groups, this is the right topic, at the right time for all of us. I am very excited to experience The Fall Event 2024 with you! (Have you registered yet?)